Tata Power

Tata Power is India’s largest private power utility. Tata Power has an installed power generation capacity of about 3000 Mega Watts, with a mix of Thermal and Hydro Power, generated at the Thermal Power Station, Trombay, and the Hydro Electric Power Stations at Bhira, Bhivpuri, and Khopoli.

Mundra Ultra Mega Power Project
The Mundra Ultra Mega Power Project (also sometimes referred to as the 'Tata Ultra Mega power project') is a proposed 4000 megawatt power station currently in the early stages of being financed and built. It is one of nine power stations referred to by the Indian government as "ultra mega" power projects which the government aims to have built by private sector companies before 2017. (See India and coal for an overview of the nine 'ultra mega' coal-fired power project proposals).

The project is proposed to consist of five units of 800 megawatts (MW) each, using coal imported from Indonesia and elsewhere. It is located in the port city of Mundra in the state of Gujarat in India.

The Mundra Ultra Mega Power Project will sell electricity to utilities in five Indian states -- Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra in western India and Haryana and Punjab in northern India. Sales will be through 25-year take-or-page Power Purchase Agreements.

May 2011: MASS protests Mundra project
In May 2011, a group known as Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan (MASS) filed a collective protest against the Mundra Ultra Mega Power Project, saying there are high risks to the project without proper mitigation and accountability measures. The protest is targeted against the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC), the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, whose financing of high-risk coal plants in India faces community resistance. Its Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) has accepted a complaint against the Plant in Mundra, Gujarat. CAO is the independent body of IFC that handles disputes and compliance issues with its investments.

MASS says the plant is located in the special economic zone (SEZ) that cuts across fishing grounds, habitat of diverse marine lives and wide expanse of farm land, and that the project’s social impact assessment is significantly flawed, as fishing communities were excluded from the list of those directly impacted and IFC green lighted the loan without a cumulative impact assessment.

With a total project cost of US$ 4.14 billion, the IFC is investing a $450 million loan and $50 million in equity. Other financial institutions funding the project are the Export-Import Bank of Korea, Asian Development Bank, India Infrastructure Finance Co. Ltd., Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd., Oriental Bank of Commerce, Vijaya Bank, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Travancore, the State Bank of Indore and other local banks.

The MASS complaint came two months after villagers in Odisha state formally challenged IFC’s funding for the GMR Kamalanga Energy Limited.

Coal-to-liquids project
In March 2009, the Indian government announced that it had awarded two coal blocks for the development of two different coal-to-liquids projects in the state of Orissa. One of them was the north Arkhapal coal block to Strategic Energy Technology Systems Ltd, a 50:50 joint venture between the Tata Power and Sasol Synfuels International, the international synfuels subsidiary of Sasol. It is projected that the $10 billion. plant would produce 80,000 barrels of crude oil a day. In early 2010 Orissa's Chief minister Naveen Patnaik told reporters that "though we have not identified the location, the proposed plant will be somewhere in the state." It was also reported that the coal would come from the Srirampur area in Talcher. The Business Standard also stated that the project "requires 3,000 acre of land for its main plant, additional land would be required for setting up coal mines, benefication plants, coal handling plants, water reservoirs, power plants and a township" and would involved the establishment of a 1600 megawatt power station. The newspaper also reported that the joint venture was "yet to make a formal application" for the plant the company was pressing the state government "to provide adequate facilities for early commissioning of the project." (See Srirampur Coal-to-Liquids Project for more details).

Directors
Accessed February 2009:


 * Ratan Naval Tata - Chair
 * Syamal Gupta
 * Ramabadran Gopalakrishnan
 * Homiar Sorabji Vachha
 * Ram Krishna Misra
 * Adi Jehangir Engineer
 * Nawshir Hoshang Mirza
 * Deepak M Satwalekar
 * Ramchandra H Patil
 * Piyush G Mankad
 * Prasad Raghava Menon
 * Sowmyan Ramakrishnan
 * Sankaranarayanan Padmanabhan
 * Banmali Agrawala

Contact

 * Web: http://www.tatapower.com

Related SourceWatch articles

 * India and coal
 * Gerry Grove-White